{"id":4251,"date":"2017-06-14T12:57:22","date_gmt":"2017-06-14T16:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/?p=4251"},"modified":"2024-07-08T06:06:22","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T10:06:22","slug":"alexa-brat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/2017\/06\/14\/alexa-brat\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Alexa turn your kid into a brat?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"crying

(Pixabay, CC0 Public Domain<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n

Experts at the crossroads of pediatrics, psychology, and AI say there\u2019s a lot we don\u2019t know about how virtual assistants might affect young, developing minds<\/a>.\u00a0Jenny Radesky<\/strong>, a U-M pediatrician who studies how digital media shapes children, says research around how kids understand digital assistants is limited, and studies that do exist on children and robots suggest children see them as semi-animate \u2014 objects that think and feel but don\u2019t eat or breathe. \u00a0A child who says something rude to Alexa and receives positive reinforcement \u2014 perhaps laughter from an onlooker or a response from the assistant \u2014 might repeat the same behavior in a different social context, Radesky supposed. But we just don\u2019t yet know. \u201cMaybe they should program Alexa to only respond to polite child voices,” Radesky said. \u201cI\u2019m only partly joking.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Experts at the crossroads of pediatrics, psychology, and AI say there\u2019s a lot we don\u2019t know about how virtual assistants might affect young, developing minds.\u00a0Jenny Radesky, a U-M pediatrician who studies how digital media shapes children, says research around how kids understand digital assistants is limited, and studies that do exist on children and robots suggest children see\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_umich_oidc_access":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[61,289],"class_list":["post-4251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-news","tag-ai","tag-children"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/boy-2432052_640.jpg",640,426,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/boy-2432052_640-125x83.jpg",125,83,true],"medium":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/boy-2432052_640-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/boy-2432052_640.jpg",640,426,false],"large":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/boy-2432052_640.jpg",600,399,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/boy-2432052_640.jpg",640,426,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/boy-2432052_640.jpg",640,426,false],"excerpt-thumbnail":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/boy-2432052_640-200x140.jpg",200,140,true],"themonic-thumbnail":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/boy-2432052_640-60x42.jpg",60,42,true],"ioslider-thumbnail":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/boy-2432052_640-640x300.jpg",640,300,true],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/boy-2432052_640.jpg",640,426,false],"400x250-crop":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/boy-2432052_640.jpg",376,250,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"News Staff","author_link":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/author\/mitnewsadm\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Experts at the crossroads of pediatrics, psychology, and AI say there\u2019s a lot we don\u2019t know about how virtual assistants might affect young, developing minds.\u00a0Jenny Radesky, a U-M pediatrician who studies how digital media shapes children, says research around how kids understand digital assistants is limited, and studies that do exist on children and robots…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4251"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4260,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4251\/revisions\/4260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}